CHAPTER 12

THE man sat opposite the drunkard, not looking at anyone. Everyone at the Boutefeu was engaged in shady business - there was no other reason to come to such a dive. The place was so disreputable that the police did not venture here, unless Savary, Napoleon’s Minister of Civilian Police, gave repeated orders and voiced his anger if they were not carried out. So when they came, they came in number, backed up by soldiers of the municipal guard, on foot and mounted. But no one worried very much about this eventuality: the police always took care to warn their informers, who let everyone know in advance. That way, there were no riots and no wounded. The police would arrest a few prostitutes, who let themselves be taken with good grace, and Monsieur Savary could reassure the Emperor that order reigned in Paris.

The drinker sat up, not as drunk as all that. 'I'm waiting for a friend.’ He spoke with a Portuguese accent.

‘I am that friend.’

‘In that case, you’re welcome at my table.’ He smiled and drank some beer, happy that the exchange had passed off exactly as his intermediary had told him. He was missing three fingers on his left hand, which lay exposed on the table. He had lost his fingers to a cannonball during a naval battle off the coast of Portugal. His sloop, A Corajosa, had been wiped out by the frenetic cannon fire of L’Amelie, a French frigate.

‘I have what you need, senhor. But it was much harder to come by than I expected. It was bad enough that I had to go to the Amazonian jungle, but what was worse was that even though I had already bartered with the Indian tribes there, they still didn’t trust me. I risked my life dealing with them! And the ocean! There was a storm in the Atlantic, the like of which I’ve never seen ... It felt as if the sky was sucking up the sea to drink it, the waves were so high. And I’ve been a sailor for sixteen years! Then getting across France ... The English, the Spanish and the Portuguese will all tell you that Napoleon’s on his knees, only they’ve all forgotten to tell him that!

I was almost arrested, I had to grease the palms of soldiers ...’ ‘How much more?’

‘Ah, por Deus, at least you know what you want!’

‘More than you can know. How much?’

‘I should ask for four times as much, but I’ll settle for triple the amount.’

‘You can have double.’

‘No, no, senhor, with all due respect: triple. If we can’t agree on a price, you can always dispense with my services and go yourself to our viceroyalty, Brazil, to get what you want.’

The thought of that made him laugh. But he added: ‘Believe it or not I’m not just motivated by money. I also want a return to the monarchy for the French. As long as Napoleon is overthrown, any king will do - Louis XVIII, Bernadotte, even a fish: “King Fish” ... Napoleon has invaded so many countries, perhaps he’s forgotten Portugal, but Portugal hasn’t forgotten Napoleon.’

The man gave in and handed over almost all the money, under the table. In exchange he received a bag full of little receptacles.

‘That isn’t triple, but it’s more than double. I had foreseen that you

would be greedy, but not that you would demand quite that much.’ ‘Do you really think you’re going to succeed, senhor?’

The man smiled in reply. It was a strange smile, a mixture of joy and ferocity. The sailor was leaning back in his chair now. He displayed his left hand again. It looked like a pale starfish a shark had taken a bite out of. ‘In your case,’ he said, ‘Napoleon has taken much more than just three fingers ...’

The man walked through the disordered crowd without taking in what he was seeing. There was a profusion of National Guardsmen, farmers from Picardy, Champagne or the Ardennes, perched with their families on carts filled with their furniture, and people standing about hoping for news. He had waited months for that meeting! Finally! Finally! But had he really obtained what he needed? If not, he would have to think of another plan.

He reached an area of the city where there was a concentration of butchers. In 1810, Napoleon had ordered that five abattoirs should be built outside Paris. But they were not finished yet, and the killing areas - the parts of the city where slaughter was authorised - were not sufficient to feed Paris with its fondness for red meat. So the capital’s butchers continued their old practices. They slit their beasts’ throats by the dozen in the courtyards of their shops and the blood ran into the streets. The man wondered if it was a prophetic vision of the Paris of tomorrow, when the city would be bathing in the blood of Parisians, Russians and Prussians, like Venice, but with blood instead of canals.

The butcher’s shop he went into was just like all the others. The animals were bleating and mooing in a nauseating odour of blood. Blood, blood, blood everywhere - it was as if he had walked into the mouth of a Leviathan that was devouring the world. An apprentice butcher recognised him and came to meet him. The man merely nodded and followed the young man towards the pen, where they would be away from prying eyes. As agreed in advance, he handed the apprentice a twenty-franc piece, but when he asked the boy to leave, the apprentice refused.

‘I want to see what you’re going to do to the animals/

‘Go on now, you won’t get any more. The person before you took everything.’

The employee still hung around, curious. The man protested, but eventually gave in because he was short of time. He opened the bag that contained eleven little terracotta pots. Eleven possibilities of success. He took a needle from his pocket, picked up the first pot and pulled out the stopper, releasing a strong vegetable odour. The butcher was amused by these strange manoeuvres. The man plunged the point of the needle into the black, syrupy liquid, which gave off such a pungent smell that it seemed as if the little pot magically contained a whole miniature virgin forest. He was so emotional that his hand trembled as he injected the thigh of an ox. The animal did not react. The man threw the needle into the straw, far away so that he would not poison himself, closed up the pot and put it in his pocket. He moved with cold precision. He took a new needle and went through the same procedure with a second pot. Still no reaction. He did it again. Failure. He tried again. Still no result. His gestures were exactly the same each time, like an automaton. Only the odours of the substances varied - strong and smooth, sharp and lingering, like soil in a forest after a storm ... A few seconds after the seventh injection, a frisson ran through the ox, and its back legs began to tremble, as if the temperature had suddenly dropped. The trembling spread through the rest of its body and the enormous 120-stone ox, opening its mouth but unable even to moo, collapsed on its side. Stiff. Dead. The man swivelled round and pricked the butcher in the arm. The effect was even more immediate and the boy fell before he understood what was happening to him. His mouth was wide open, but he was no longer breathing.

The man packed away his equipment and left. There were so many people of all types about that no one paid him any attention. He was filled with joy. He had what he wanted and the poison was even more effective than he had heard. His confidence knew no bounds. Now he could kill at a touch, like a god.

CHAPTER 13

ON 20 March Margont paid an errand boy to take a note to ‘Monsieur Lami’. The message was coded, using a method he had perfected with Lefine in the past to while away the hours of boredom in the bivouac. The note, when decoded, simply said, ‘Meet me at midday chez Marat.’

They met at the appointed hour on the outskirts of Paris, at the foot of the hill of Montmartre, ‘Mount Marat’, as it had sometimes been called during the Revolution. Lefine still mockingly used the old-fashioned appellation. Margont was delighted to see his old friend. He felt himself again.